Basics & Process – Page 8

Pad Thai

Good food, iconic food, is often a bit of a mystery, if for no other reason than the roots of such stuff are hard to unearth in any definitive way. Take Pad Thai, (AKA Phat Thai, or Phad Thai), as a shining example; the ubiquitous noodle dish that, as far as we generally think, hails from its namesake country. Best guesses would indicate that the dish was introduced to what is now Thailand some time in the 14th or 15th centuries, when the area was known as the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. The introduction may have come from Viet Nam, or China, but we’ll likely never know for sure.

What we can be sure of is the stone cold fact that Pad Thai, done right, is stunningly delicious, and uniquely Thai, so much so that Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the Prime Minister of Thailand in the middle twentieth century, heavily promoted Pad Thai as a vehicle for nationalism, when he was leading the charge to change Siam into modern Thailand. At the time, Chinese influence was strong in the region, inlcuding the popularity of wheat noodles. Phibunsongkhram championed rice noodles in an effort to reduce that influence, and the east is history. American, British, and Aussie soldiers exposed to Pad Thai during WW II brought the love home with them, and the dish quickly conquered the world. For many casual diners, Pad Thai is the one dish they unerringly identify as Thai. In 2011, a CNN pole place Pad Thai in the top 5 of the ‘world’s most delicious foods.’

Like many signature dishes, (think pasta in Italy, stew almost everywhere, you get the idea), every Thai cook has an authentic recipe, and who are we to argue about the ‘most authentic?’ There are some fundamental elements and processes you really need in order to make great Pad Thai, but after that, the sky’s the limit – It begs for creativity, and is designed to take advantage of what’s fresh and available.

In Thailand, Pad Thai is largely street food, made by cooks who have been perfecting their signature version for decades, if not generations. In such a highly competitive market, you’ve simply gotta be really good at it, or you don’t survive. In America, all too often what passes for Pad Thai wouldn’t last a day in Bangkok. Often overtly oily and heavy, that version is the antithesis of truly great Pad Thai. The real stuff is fairly dry, light, and light reddish-brown in color – a perfect balance of the complex flavors that make it up, salty, sweet, sour, umami, and heat in harmony. Pad Thai is wonderful done vegetarian style. If you like proteins, try fresh, local tofu in a batch. By the same token, almost any protein will shine as well; fish, shellfish, or poultry will do nicely.

The seasoning is the thing, and the mix is thus – rice noodles, stir fried with tamarind (sour), fish sauce (salty), chiles (heat), and palm sugar (sweet), is the magic trick that makes this wonderful stuff. There are many more things that can and do get added to Pad Thai, but the essence of the dish is a stunningly good umami (savory) creation.

Tamarind paste - the heart of Pad Thai — Tamarind paste – the heart of Pad Thai

As with all things wonderful, the quality and freshness of your ingredients absolutely defines the dish. In preparation for making great Pad Thai, take a field trip to a local Asian grocer, and ask for help – Chances are good you’ll get some great tips on what’s best, and your dish will shine as a result. Without question, your rice noodles should be as good a quality as you can find, as should the fish sauce – The latter available to us in the United States runs the gamut from sublime to horrid, so check out this excellent primer from Our Daily Brine, and heed their findings. The bad stuff is ubiquitous here, and it’s really, really bad – stuff like Three Crabs or Squid smell and taste horrible, and can easily kill an entire dish. On the other hand, really good fish sauce, like the superlative Red Boat, smells and tastes wonderful all by itself. Note for vegetarians – You’ll want to sub soy sauce for the fish sauce, and here too, the better the quality, the better the dish.

Finally, you’ll want a wok to do this dish justice, with a truly hot burner throughout.
Real Deal Pad Thai
Serves 4 to 6

1 package Thai Rice Noodles
1/2 Pound Protein – Tofu, Baby Shrimp, Chicken, etc
1 Cup Chinese Chive
4 Tablespoons Tamarind Paste
3 Tablespoons Peanut Oil
3 Tablespoons Peanuts
2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
2 teaspoons Palm Sugar
3 cloves Garlic
3 Spring Onions
2 teaspoons White Pepper berries
2-3 teaspoons Thai Chiles
2 medium Eggs
1 fresh Lime
Optional –
1 Tablespoon Preserved Turnip
1/2 Cup Bean Sprouts

In a large mixing bowl, cover the noodles with lukewarm water by at least an inch. Let them sit for 5 minutes or so, then pour out the water and add fresh again. Let the noodles soak while you’re prepping the other ingredients. When they come out of the package, the noodles will be springy, kind of plastic feeling – When they’re ready to fry, they should feel flexible, but in the least mushy or soft – This is the big key to great Pad Thai noodles – They should be on the dry side when they hit the wok – and you can always add moisture, but you can’t fix mushy noodles!

Cubed proteins - we used chicken thighs — Cubed proteins – we used chicken thighs

Cube your protein to bite size.

Get your Mis together - Pad Thai prep — Get your Mis together – Pad Thai prep

Mince the garlic, cut spring onions into 1/4″ thick rounds, rough chop peanuts, quarter the lime, (Mince the preserved turnip, and rinse the bean sprouts if you’re adding those, and set aside).

Have fish sauce, tamarind, and sugar ready to go, with a measuring spoon right at hand.

Combine pepper and chiles in a spice grinder and pulse until they’re a nice, even consistently. Set aside.

In a hot wok over high heat, add the peanut oil and heat through.

Add the chopped peanuts and fry until golden brown, about 1 minute. Remove peanuts with a slotted spoon and set them on clean paper toweling to drain.

Add the garlic, half the spring onion, and half the chives to the wok and fry, about 1 minute.

Add your proteins to the hot wok and fry until lightly browned, about 2-3 minutes.

Noodles as they hit the wok - flexible, but not soft. — Noodles as they hit the wok – flexible, but not soft.

Drain the rice noodles and add them to the wok. The noodles will start out stiff, so give them a minute or so to absorb the heat and steam from the wok, then fold them into the other ingredients. Stir steadily throughout.

Noodles starting to soften, time to incorporate them

Add the fish sauce, tamarind, sugar, pepper, and chiles to the wok and stir vigorously. Squeeze half the lime in as well.

Make room on one side of the wok and crack the eggs into it, scramble them quickly, then incorporate.

When the rice noodles have softened to al dente, taste the Pad Thai and adjust seasoning if necessary – You want a nice, even balance of all the flavors. The noodles should be soft and quite dry.

Sprinkle the peanuts, remaining chives and spring onions on top and serve immediately – we bring the wok to the table and let folks dish up from that.

Have fish sauce, chiles, and palm sugar at the table so folks can Doctor their plate as they see fit.

And yes, it’s even better the next day.

La Réaction de Maillard

The reaction discovered by Louis Maillard explains a great deal about the appeal of cooked foods.

If I told you that a French scientist working in the early twentieth century was responsible for the understanding of how a whole bunch of things you like to eat get the way they do when we cook them, would you be surprised? Louis Camille Maillard, (May-yard), was his name, and his work resonates throughout the kitchens of the world to this very day. What Maillard did was to explain why many foods turn brown, and why we like it when they do – La Réaction de Maillard.

For a guy who did such seminal work in the science of food, very little seems to be know about the man. He was born in 1878, in Pont-à-Mousson, a little town on the river Moselle, between Metz and Nancy, about 200 miles due east of Paris. Pont-à- Mousson was a village of roughly 8,000 souls in Maillard’s day. Since the late sixteenth century, there had been a Jesuit university there, with studies in theology, law, medicine, and the arts. The area was predominantly German speaking, and part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1766, when France claimed it and King Louie the Beloved moved the university to Nancy.
The town remained a center for the arts, sporting a bustling papier mâché factory. Located on a strategically important river crossing, Mousson was torn by war throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For such a tiny place, it sports more than its share of celebrity. In addition to Maillard, a saint, (Guarinus of Sitten), a Queen (Margaret of Anjou), a General (Geraud Duroc), and the inventor of the modern bicycle, (Pierre Lallement), all hailed from there.

Louie’s father was a medical doctor, his mother, a housewife. While there were professional bakers in the extended family, (who all hailed from the Lorraine region), nothing in the sparse information available regarding Maillard’s upbringing points to food. He began university studies at the tender age of 16, and excelled in mathematics and chemistry. He married in 1909 and divorced four years later, without producing any progeny. He never remarried; he was clearly bound to his work. I’ve never found anything to indicate if Maillard cooked, was particularly fond of eating, or ever realized that his work would so deeply affect food science. Look at the few photographs taken of him throughout his life, and you see a guy who looks like he ate because he had to, (although he did have a fabulous mustache).

His work was predominantly medical and physiological in nature. He studied the metabolism of urea and kidney function, and this research was fruitful toward better understanding and treatment of kidney diseases. In 1912, pursuant to this line of research, he began studying the reaction between amino acids and sugars. This work lead to his discovery of certain reactions, and was quantified as the Maillard reaction was named after him. He received a variety of scientific accolades, including the French Academy of Medicine award in 1914.

Maillard’s seminal work toward the discovery of the reaction that bears his name was focused on kidney function, specifically, the reasons why and how us humans pee in a variety of shades of yellow. He was curious about processes that would lead relatively clear substances to change color and produce CO2 when heated. His gut told him this would be important knowledge toward a better understanding of diabetes. Nothing he found initially would necessarily have lead him to a realization that his work would have bearing on food science for decades to come. After discovering his namesake reaction, he went on to other work, sometimes making rather sudden and pronounced changes in area and venue of study. One of these jumps occurred post WWI, when he left France altogether and began studying pharmacology. For all practical purposes, he gave up the life of research he’d been pursuing for a couple of decades. Maillard died in Paris in 1934, at the age of 56.

The heady scent of freshly baked bread owes its allure to the Maillard Reaction.

How does Maillard’s discovery segue to food? In more ways than you might imagine. Everything from the browning of meat to toasted bread, and much more – biscuits, frittes, roux, pretzels and crackers, dried and condensed milk, crusty bread, maple syrup, roasted coffee, dull de leche, and barley malted for beer or booze all speak to the human appetite largely because of the Maillard’s Reaction. Some of these specifically address color, but the lions share are tied to our senses of smell and taste.

Roasting coffee beans owe their allure to Maillard as well.

And what of that science? Browning of food happens, in big picture form, one of two ways – one is enzymatic and the other, well, isn’t. The non-enzymatic branch narrows into three shoots, one of which is the Maillard Reaction. This occurs when a compound known as a carbonyl, (a functional group composed of a carbon atom double bonded to an oxygen atom, like for instance, sugar), reacts with an amino acid, peptide (AKA two or more linked amino acids), or a protein. The reaction process is rather complex, but in essence, heat is the catalyst that causes changes in those constituents, leading to browning and associated flavor and smells. Relatively high heat in cooking terms is usually required, although the reaction can occur at lower temperatures when concentrations of amino acids and sugars are high.

While browning tells us that many foods are cooked to a satisfactory level, it’s the smell of seared steak, freshly baked bread, roasting peanuts, or a dumpling being pan fried that really illustrates the power of Maillard’s discovery. Over the millennia that humans have cooked food, the process has gone from arcane knowledge to quite common, and yet the why behind the process remained hidden until the early 20th century – pretty fascinating, if you ask me.

Seared steak, it's all in the smell... — Seared steak, it’s all in the smell…

Yet it was the desire to better understand physiological processes within the human body that drove Maillard’s discovery, and his reaction does indeed occur within us. Studies have shown correlation between the reaction and degenerative eye diseases, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, and neuro-degenerative disorders.

I’m probably just being a romantic, but for some reason, I get a visual of Maillard, sitting at a little table is his lab, absently munching on a chunk of baguette, pondering his research, without realizing that his answer was literally in the palm of his hand, all along.

Kitchen Knife Confidential

Kitchen knife confidential – Knives are quite simply at the heart of a Chef’s tool chest. Whether you do food for a living, for fun, or out of necessity, they should be at the center of yours, too. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about cooking knives, and a few solid truths. First, in answer to the question most asked, ‘Do Chefs really always carry their own knives,’ the answer is a resounding yes. Were you to attend any serious cooking school, you’d be required above all else to have your own knives with you from day one – No knives, no school…

My Custom Element Fe knives — My Element Fe knives on a recent trip to Montana. Hammered, hand forged high carbon steel, with Ebony handles and bronze hardware.

In any serious kitchen across this world, the same rule applies – while they’ll be stocked with cookware, hand tools, and the like, you gotta have and use your own knives, period, end of story. And yes, when we travel, we bring our own knives with us, without fail. Knives to a Chef are like a glove to a pro baseball player – Personal, bordering on sacred. Many professional Chefs are truly knife obsessed, and many are collectors. Buying a new knife when changing positions, venues, or promoting is quite common. The kit a Chef uses daily and brings along with them when they travel vary from extremely simple to foot locker complex.

The power of the knife, at least from the male perspective, surely stems from its roots as a weapon of war and personal defense. Just as a soldier would pamper and never be found without a sword, so it goes in the kitchen, (This is my deba! There are many debas like it, but this one is mine!”) That sort of heavy stuff generates some fairly hefty superstition around the tool as well, some of which might surprise you.

How much of this weighty chef emphasis translates to the home kitchen? A fair share, if you’re savvy and serious about your cooking. There are solid reasons why you should buy, keep, use, and properly maintain a decent set of your own; efficacy, safety, and performance first among them. That said, this does not imply the need for expensive, by any sense of the word. My Sis, Ann Lovejoy is an inspired and extremely talented chef, and she uses an inexpensive set like these here – they serve her well, and when they get too dull, she buys more – If that seems like blasphemy, it ain’t. Sharpening isn’t for everyone, especially if that process gets between you and the joy of cooking.
My friends Christy and Lissa have between them some pretty nice quality knives that get sharpened, I’m fairly certain, once a year, when I visit northern Minnesota to play music and cook.
And then there’s me, with a set built up from a core of custom knives forged by a local maker, (every aspect of them chosen by me, made to my exact specifications), augmented by a few specialty varieties I use occasionally. Where you lie on the spectrum depends on a bunch of factors, wallet, willingness to perform maintenance, and expected performance chief among them. What’s best is what works well for you, so let’s explore that.

Chef, utility, paring - All you really need. — Chef, utility, paring – All you really need.

First off, which knives do you really, truly need? The answer is, not many. There are a bunch of opinions on this, so I’ll add mine – A kitchen can get by very capably with a full sized chefs knife, a smaller derivation thereof, and a parer. That’s it- seriously. Nine times out of ten when I cook, some variation on that theme is all I use. Often enough, it’s two of those three.

A chefs knife could mean the traditional western shape and size, usually found in anywhere from 7″ to 12″ lengths, (there’s also a Japanese variant known as a Gyutou, which is almost identical in shape to a western chef knife). The chefs knife is the workhorse of your kit, so the length depends on what wields most comfortably for you. For most of us, that’s going to be an 8″ knife, with which you can do almost anything. If you watch food porn on TV, you might see a whole episode of Chopped or Iron Chef wherein a chef or Sous uses nothing but their big blade for everything they do – That kind of dexterity depends on thousands of hours of knife work in order to be accomplished safely – And that’s why there are shorter knives for folks who don’t do this professionally.

The eastern chefs knife, the Santoku, means ‘three virtues’, a nod to the fact that this knife is equally good at slicing, dicing, and mincing. Like a western chefs knife, there’s not much you can’t do with a good Santoku. They are generally lighter in weight than a western blade, which certainly speaks to their popularity. Of the two options, I opt for the Santoku; I like the shape and balance better than the traditional western blade, so that’s what I use exclusively. Since the shape, weight, and balance of chefs knives vary considerably, you’ll need to do some handling in order to determine what floats your boat.
While western chefs knives feature what I’d call a drop point blade shape, a Santoku has what’s known as a sheepsfoot tip – that difference can be a real key to comfort of use, (AKA how often or likely you are to cut yourself using one – One of the big reasons I favor a Santoku). Your chefs knife will do everything from cutting up poultry to chopping vegetables or slicing fruit; it’s only downside is its size, which means a smaller knife is prudent for more delicate work. Western chef knives sold commercially are most often stainless steel, while the Santoku is commonly made from high carbon steel – More on that in a bit.

The smaller derivative in western knives is often called a utility knife, while Japanese variants are the Deba or Nakiri – Again, shapes, points, and lengths vary considerably, and require hands on use for a proper buying decision. As you can see from the picture of my knife roll, I use a small Deba as my second knife. This knife does everything a chef knife will do, but on a smaller scale, and by the same token, can break into the realm of tasks usually assigned to a parer. The greater weight and length of this knife both advantage and disadvantage versus a paring blade.

And finally there’s a parer, called just that in western patterns, and either paring or Petty knife in eastern versions. A parer is usually around a 3″ knife with a thin and somewhat flexible blade. This is the knife to use when field stripping a chile, cutting supremes of fruit, or any other fine kitchen work requiring precise control. My personal parer has a somewhat thicker and more rigid blade than this design generally does – That’s my preference, and one reason I use knives that were made specifically for me.

My kit, and yes, even cheap ass steak knives - They're Stanley's, and M loves 'em... — My kit, and yes, even cheap ass steak knives – They’re Stanley’s, and M loves ’em…

As you can see from the various pictures here, and from any store that sells cooking knives, there are a bunch more variants in both western and Japanese styles. The truth of the matter is that most of these are highly specialized and intended for professionals who depend on their knives for their living. This does not imply that home chefs don’t or won’t need to get some of these over time. My personal quiver also includes a boning knife, a slicer, and a large, heavy cleaver, because I buy proteins in bulk and butcher at home. Filling out my kit are a thin, flexible clip point parer, a birds beak or tourné tip parer, a small, serrated slicer, and a serrated bread knife. That said, I’ll note that I’m not a guy who keeps kitchen tools around that I don’t use, and all of those have remained with me long enough to earn their places. It’s unlikely that either you or I will need an offset slicer, tomato knife, or a hankotsu, but if you ever do, have no doubt there’ll be somebody out there happy to sell, or make you one.

So, you’re ready to buy some knives – What kind they’ll be is a primary consideration, and in so choosing, you’ll need to decide what they’ll be made of. The primary decision in blade material is stainless versus high carbon steel. While there are many derivations and combinations, (including high carbon stainless, just mess with your head), the primary difference is the addition of chromium to the basic blend that makes high carbon steel – That chromium imparts enhanced resistance to rust and corrosion – stainless steel. Now, there’s some seriously hard stainless out there,I can tell you first hand – I’ve had some stainless knives that took a lot of work to sharpen – but when it’s all said and done, the truth is that high carbon steel will stay sharper longer than stainless and is notably easier to sharpen – As such, if you don’t want to fuss with a lot of sharpening, you should keep that in mind.
Next you’ll be picking blade shape and size, and finally, handle shape and material – As I mentioned above, choosing knives isn’t generally something to be done online; you’ll want hands on to know what feels right to you. All of these factors impact the cutting ability of any given knife for you, let alone balance, feel, and comfort. There are grips or handles made from every synthetic thing you can name, as well as a wide variety of woods. This too is an important consideration, impacting how sound the tool feels in your hand, how long they’ll last, and how much work will be required on your part to maintain them. Again, get into the custom realm, and you can and will pick not only handle material, but grip shape, wood, as well as bolster and rivet material. Whether or not all that matters is up to you.

Every variant from cheap over the counter, to decent, to very high end production knives, semi-custom to true custom, is out there. While Henckles and Wusthoff, and Shun to Khun make great knives, there are small batch makers in both schools, here in the states and overseas, that you can check out. And then there are the true hand-makers, like Andy Gladish of Element Fe Forge here on Washington State’s Guemes Island – The man who makes my knives. His knives combine artistry with the age old science of hand forging; they are a delight in the hand and a joy to use. As with many makers, Andy sells production knives, as well as semi and true custom work. His stuff is, frankly, probably cheaper than it should be, which is your gain. If you find yourself at a farmers market up here in the northwest corner of the state, poke around and you’re likely to find Andy. You can have production pieces from him for under $50 a piece, and you could easily do a very, very nice three knife set for under $300. For hand made knives, that’s amazing. Wherever you live, you’ve likely got an Andy close by – If you’re to the point where the thought of a handmade blade or two appeals, go find them. In my case, the chance to collaborate with the maker, choosing blade composition, length, weight, flexibility, adding some pretty rare ebony handles made from wood I’ve had in my stash for a long time, coupled with brass bolsters and rivets, was the heart of why I wanted to go custom – It allowed my personal experience and preferences to be translated to the tools themselves – My recipe, in essence.

Finally, a note on sharpening, and on choosing between western and Japanese knives – Japanese blades are traditionally sharpened on only one side, known as a chisel grind, and as such are made in variants designed for right and left handed chefs. Western blades are generally sharpened on both sides, most often in a straight V, but also found in compound, and hollow grinds.
Pay strict attention to what your buying if you’re going to maintain your knives yourself – You’ve got to be able to consistently and safely sharpen whatever you chose.
Whether you sharpen by hand, or mechanically, or have it done for you, depends on your level of comfort and willingness to fuss with things. Whether you have expensive or cheap knives, they need to be sharp. The reasons are simple and twofold – Dull knives don’t perform well, and they’re dangerous – The former leads to the latter – pushing extra hard on a dull parer has caused more hand injuries than you can shake an E.R. at, so don’t go there.
As a woodworker, I’ve always sharpened my own tools, from chainsaws to chisels, and that’s how I do my cooking knives. That said, I appreciate efficiency and maximum time in cooking, so I’ve tried many variants of the mechanical sharpener, from $19.95 hand held versions to the $180 electric, three-stage version that sits in my kitchen these days – While I’d personally never sharpen a chisel or plane iron with anything mechanical, I’m happy to do so in the kitchen, with the right tool, (and Andy uses a simple belt sander for the job); if hand sharpening appeals to you, check out Scary Sharp, the method I use for my hand tools.
Something like my Chef’s Choice unit, with diamond, hard steel, and leather stages, will make any blade shaving sharp in short order. That said, that device will enforce the only grind it knows how to do on your nice, new knife, either sharpening, changing it radically, or possibly ruining it, so be careful. Sharpening is as much art as it is mechanics. Putting a good edge on a knife puts you in touch with the feel of the metal itself – What it’s made of, how hard it is, and how it responds to the heat and friction of sharpening.
By the way, there’s nothing wrong with Chris and Liss having knives sharpened once a year. They’re both good cooks, and they know what they like. I, on the other hand, am kinda seriously OCD about sharp, so mine get far more attention. That said, I just handed a full set of Henckles that I bought in 1998 to my youngest son, some 18 years later. They’re far from worn out, and he’ll get decades more of good user from them, without a doubt.

Chicken Paillard

Twice in recent editions of The New Yorker magazine, I read about folks out to eat in the city so big they had to name it twice ordering Chicken Paillard. That struck me as odd, because that’s not even remotely a modern dish. You won’t find it on the menu in Seattle or Boston, I’d bet, (Although now that it was in the New Yorker twice, you just might). The dish got me thinking, and then, naturally, I felt compelled to dive into it a bit.

That Chicken Paillard is going to arrive at your table as a thin cutlet, most likely pan seared or butter poached. You’d think, at first glance, that this will be a fairly unremarkable dish. Yet when you take that first bite, your surprise and delight alarms go off – This chicken is tender, juicy – Remarkable, in fact. How does that work in something that looks so pedestrian? What we have here is a classic example of making something look simple. There’s more than meets the eye.

Paillard is a relatively old French term, and the really odd thing is that the root meaning is ‘bawdy’. How that segued into a trendy dish, I don’t know – the culinary variant refers to a thinly sliced or pounded piece of meat. Nowadays, the process is most often called escalope, (or escallope, if you like). That term first appeared in French cooking back in the 1600s, and harkens back to the mollusk that shares the name. A l’escalope meant, in the style of an escalope, such that whatever was being prepared thus was flattened to resemble that noble sea creature.

Doing this to a piece of flesh has practical benefits other than visual legerdemain. Thinning chicken, beef, or pork to an even thickness equates to even cooking, which is of course, always desirable. Secondly, thinner also means faster cooking, and that means easier; also a desirable thing. Thinner also, as strange as it may sound, equals juicier as well; faster cooking time enables that trick. And finally, the amount of pounding I’ll advocate for does indeed tenderize your proteins as well. All of that means that this is a technique definitely worth doing.

The process of escalloping is generally perceived as whacking on a hunk of protein until it’s flat, but that’s frankly not a best practice. Take a nice plump chicken breast like the one I’ll work with herein. That thing is a good 2″ thick as it comes from the butcher; flattening that out with a meat hammer would wear out a veteran roofer, let alone a home cook. Secondly, that much pounding goes well beyond tenderizing and enters the realm of making meat jelly – not very appealing, that. With all those warnings in mind, here’s how it’s done right – A slicer or carver works best for this operation, but any well sharpened blade of 5″ or more will suffice.

On a cutting board, lay the chicken breast skin side down.
Carefully remove the breast from the bone, (bag and freeze bones for future stock production.)
Trim any excess fat, skin flaps, etc.

Make a single cut, lengthwise, roughly half way through the thickness of the breast.

Turn your knife 90°, (parallel to the breast), and slice evenly from that first cut toward the outer edge of the breast, stopping when what’s left uncut is roughly equal to the thickness of the remaining breast.

Repeat that cut on the other half of the breast.

Now you can gently unfold the breast to one roughly uniform butterfly.

Cover with parchment or waxed paper, and use the flat side of a meat hammer to gently pound the beast to uniform thickness.

Turn meat hammer to the pointy side and very gently, evenly tap the top surface of the breast to tenderize.

You can and should keep skin intact if you’re going to butter poach or pan sear, for added flavor and moisture retention.
If you’re doing a roulade, remove the skin and save it for making schmaltz.
There you have it – a perfectly escalloped breast ready for cooking. Again, the method allows you to cook the protein as is, or roll it up into some thing a bit fancier if you wish. Here are a couple recipes covering both options. Another fringe benefit of the method is that it notably stretches your yield – A single, plump chicken breast will feed two well, potentially with leftovers remaining.

Classic Chicken Paillard
1 – 2 fresh Chicken Breasts, bone in and skin on.
1 small Lemon
3 Ounces Unsalted Butter
1 Tablespoon Wondra Flour
1 Tablespoon Avocado Oil
Pinch fresh Lemon Thyme
Sea Salt
Grains of Paradise

Escalope the chicken breast(s) as per above directions.
Chiffonade fresh sage, (dried is fine too).
In a heavy sauté pan over medium heat, combine butter and oil and melt/heat through.
Slice breast into halves lengthwise.
Season lightly with sea salt and grains of paradise.
Lightly dust breasts evenly with Wondra.
Carefully place breast skin side down in hot sauté pan, and gently press to create full contact with the pan.
Allow to cook for about 2 minutes, then lift one side of pan slightly to pool the butter and oil blend.
Spoon hot butter and oil evenly over the top of the breast for about another 2 minutes, until pan side of breast is nicely browned.
Remove breast from pan and allow to rest for 3-5 minutes, and serve.

There’s the deceptively simple way to take advantage of this wonderful method. Now, here’s one that sounds fussy, maybe even difficult, but truly is neither – It’s easy, fun, and oh, so rewarding. Roulade en Croute means simply rolled and covered with a crust. It’s delicious, offers myriad variations, and quite lovely. While house made is always preferable, I’ll share a dirty little secret about pie crust – Check out Pillsbury refrigerated crusts – There’s virtually nothing bad in them, they taste great, and if you’re pressed for time, they’ll more than do in a pinch.

Chicken Roulade en Croute
1 Large Chicken Breast
Single Pie Crust
1/2 Cup Aged Provolone, shredded
1/2 Cup chopped dried, sweetened Cranberries
1/2 Cup roasted, chopped Hazelnuts
2 teaspoons fresh Sage, (dried is fine)
Jane’s Crazy Salt
Fresh ground Pepper

Prepare escaloped chicken breast.
In a dry sauté pan over medium heat, toss chopped hazelnuts until lightly browned. Remove from heat, set aside to cool.

Spread even layers of cheese, nuts, cranberries, and sage over the breast.

Preheat oven to 350° F.
Roll out pie crust to roughly 10″
Gently grab one of the long edges of the breast and form a roll.
Transfer rolled breast to center of crust.

Lap edges of crust over breast, seal with a little water.

Fold crust ends in on themselves neatly.

Place breast on a heavy skillet.

Lightly rub a little butter over surface.
Season with Jane’s and pepper.
Poke a few lines or holes in crust – You can also cut some small pieces and do a nice design over top – a flower, plant, etc looks pretty cool when done.

Place pan on a centered rack in oven.
Bake for 20 minutes, then check internal temperature with an instant read thermometer. When temp reaches 155° F, remove roulade from heat and allow to rest in the pan for 10 minutes.

Cut generous slices and serve.

Although you won’t need it, a simple pan sauce certainly doesn’t hurt anything.
Over medium heat, deglaze the pan you cooked the roulade in with a half cup of dry white wine. Stir up all the little cooked bits, then add a quarter cup of chicken stock, (or demi glacé, if you heeded our stock making post). Allow that to simmer and reduce for a couple of minutes until the sauce thickens slightly.
Melt in and incorporate a tablespoon of butter, and drizzle hot over the roulade.

House Made Stock

Nephew Ian put in another topic request, this one for making homemade stock. If we had to pick one thing that separates really good restaurant quality food from most home cooked stuff, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to chose the making and judicious use of homemade stock.

The difference between homemade and anything store bought is night and day; you’ll enjoy far greater depth and breadth of flavor, as well as the common sense step of keeping and using the stuff you need to make stock with, instead of throwing it away – Everything from the ends of trimmed veggies, to fish racks, bones, and carcasses are the stuff of great stock. Making stock at home is neither particularly laborious or complex. Once you get in the groove of thinking about using your leftovers accordingly, it’s a pretty simple process.
First things first, let’s define stock, vis-a-vis its thinner cousin, broth, and thicker progeny, demi-glacé. In simplest terms, stock comes from bones, while broth comes from meat. Think of stock as the deeper and more complex root of superior soup, sauce, risotto, and a thousand other variants. When the first taste of one of those dishes blows you away, it’s a safe bet there’s rich, house-made stock at the core. There’s an enhanced mouth feel and richness to stock, brought forth by the gelatin released from bones, that you just don’t get anywhere else.
Preparation for making stocks begins with saving the ingredients; Don’t throw out the bones, carcass, etc of your last wonderful roast, chicken, turkey, ribs, etc – Keep ’em and freeze ’em and set ’em aside for future use. You can also certainly ask for beef/veal/etc bones from your butcher; with a resurgence in small, local butchers in full swing across this country, do your due diligence and see if you’ve got one close by – They’re sure to be prepared and happy to get you what you need.

For hundreds of years, the go-to restaurant stock was veal, or beef. Nowadays, Dark Chicken Stock has replaced those more traditional variants as the root of great soup, sauce, etc.. It’s probably healthier for you than beef or veal, and frankly, it’s far more versatile; we use it almost daily in our kitchen. For the record – The sole difference between light and dark chicken stock is whether or not the bones have been roasted. Also, If you prefer to do beef, veal, pork, etc, you’ll want about 3-4 pounds of bones to substitute for the chicken carcasses used herein.
What you’re going to do is a three part process – slow roast, simmer, clarification. The slow roast will breakdown and deepen favors from the carcasses or bones and a trinity of aromatic bases, (in this case, mirepoix – onion, carrot, and celery), and a touch of tomato paste. The slow roast works on everything, breaking down cartilage, marrow, fat, skin – drawing out the essence of the veggies with slow caramelization. The tomato paste enhances color and flavor, and the acid therein helps break down connective tissue in the bones, aiding in the production of usable gelatin for your stock.

You’ll need the following to build a good stock pot worth of the real deal.

2-4 Chicken Carcasses
2 medium Yellow or Sweet Onions
3-5 Carrots
3-5 stalks Celery
Small can Tomato Paste
Olive or Avocado Oil
Sea Salt
Fresh ground Pepper

Decent Cheesecloth, (60 to 90 pound is best)
3+ Gallon Stock Pot
Colander, Strainer, or Chinoise
Slotted or perforated Spoon

Preheat oven to 250° F.
Have carcasses or bones defrosted and close to room temperature.
Rough chop onion, celery, and carrots to a final mirepoix of 50% onion, and 25% each celery and carrot – You don’t need to be exact. Rough chop means fairly uniform pieces of each, about 3/4″ big.
Spread the mire poix evenly across a rimmed baking sheet.
Season veggies with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of oil.
Break down carcasses minimally, just enough that you can evenly cover the mire poix.
Using a spatula, dab a thin coating of tomato paste over the carcasses; this doesn’t have to be thick – use a whole, small can for a batch of this size, evenly spread.
Slow roast everything for about 3 hour, flipping once about half way through, until bones have browned, and veggies are caramelized.

Remove everything from the oven and carefully transfer into a stockpot over medium-high heat. Add water until you’ve got a good two inches over the top of everything in the pot.
Add,
3-4 Bay Leaves
Teaspoon of Sea Salt
10-12 whole Pepper berries

Once the water begins to boil, reduce the heat to low and continue simmering for at least 6 hours, (and as much as 8.)
As fat and associated scum rises to the surface, (If you see Dick Cheney, push him back under), skim that off with a slotted or perforated spoon.
You’ll lose water to evaporation; keep adding fresh to maintain that couple of inches over the contents.
Remove pot from stove, and allow the stock to cool to room temperature. You can place the whole pot in an ice bath, (50% – 50% ice and water), to cool it faster; this is also safer than simply waiting it out.
Cover and refrigerate overnight, (Or stick it out on the back porch, covered, if it’s cold enough out).
In the morning, you’ll find a nice, solid layer of fat has formed on the top of your stock; carefully ladle that off and discard.

Now comes clarification;
Set up a colander, strainer, or chinoise, with a large mixing bowl beneath.
Pour the contents of your stock pot carefully through; this first pass will remove the big chunks from the stock.
Discard the bones, veggies, etc.

Now you’ll need decent cheesecloth at this point, as it’s time to really clarify.
Line your straining device with a layer or two of cheesecloth big enough to drape over the edges somewhat; place the stock pot or mixing bowl underneath.
Slowly pour the stock through the cheesecloth.
After each pass, rinse the vessel you poured from, and the cheesecloth, before making another pass.
You’ll want at least 6 – 8 passes to get to reasonable clarity, something like this – beautiful, flavorful house made stock.

We freeze stock in quart sized freezer bags; this is a good size to use as the basis for soups and stews. You can store some refrigerated, in an airtight container, for up to 5 days. Some should most definitely be further reduced into demi-glacé, and here’s why.

In his epic tale of back of house whackiness, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain wrote of demi-glacé, “Freeze this stuff in an ice-cube tray, pop out a cube or two as needed, and you are in business – you can rule the world.” And when you’re right, you’re right. If you knew how many amazing sauces spring from this one source, you’d be gob smacked. While demi-glacé is traditionally made from veal or beef stock, you certainly can and should make it from chicken stock – Like the stock, chicken demi-glacé is amazingly versatile. Traditional demi-glacé is served over beef, veal, or lamb – chicken glacé not only works on those proteins, it’s amazing with chicken, pork, veggies, potatoes, and rice or risotto.

There’re a myriad of ways to make it; doing so with fresh stock is one of the easiest and most satisfying, and it only makes sense, when you’ve already been working through stock production. You can, if you like, simply return some stock to a sauté pan over medium heat, turn it down to a bare simmer after it gets bubbling, and reduce that by roughly 50% – What you’ll have is a more concentrated, intense iteration of the stock you just made, and that is indeed demi-glacé, no matter what pretentious foodies tell you. That said, putting a few more refinements in the mix will pay big dividends. Here’s how.

2 Cups fresh Chicken Stock
1 Cup Old Vine Zinfandel
2 Tablespoons minced Shallot
2 teaspoons Lemon Thyme
1 teaspoon Grains of Paradise, (Black Peppercorns are fine)
1 Bay Leaf

In a large sauté pan over medium heat, combine all ingredients, except the butter.
As the mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced by roughly 50%.
Test thickness by pouring some of the demi-glacé from a spoon; it should leave a noticeably thick, even coat on the spoon.
Remove from heat and cool to room temp, (again, a mixing bowl in an ice bath does a great job).
Transfer demi-glacé to a pop-out ice cube tray, filling evenly. Slip the tray inside a gallon freezer bag, press excess air out, (I suck all the air out to avoid freezer burn), and freeze.

When you want an amazing pan sauce, pull out your tray, pop out a cube or two, and melt over medium heat. Finish with a thumbnail sized hunk of butter, and viola. You can also add a cube to boiling water for rice or veggies. A cube add to your regular gravy ingredients is especially delightful – Potential uses are as broad as your imagination.